Oracle Updates Jdeveloper

Oracle is updating its JDeveloper Java development tool suite focused on Oracle Fusion Middleware. The new JDeveloper 11g Release 2 includes an updated Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) that provides new features to make it easier to develop applications for Oracle Fusion middleware servers.
New version of Oracle Fusion focused Java IDE is released.

Bill Pataky, vice president of product management at Oracle told InternetNews.com that the new JDeveloper release has a visual editor for skinning applications.

"It makes changing the look and feel of applications, much easier, so you don't have to be a CSS guru," Pataky said.

Pataky added that RESTful web services are now supported, providing more extensibility for Fusion applications. He noted that startup time for JDeveloper overall has also been improved.

From a team perspective, there is a server side component of JDeveloper that now includes support for Apache Maven and Hudson for application building.

"It provides visibility into all the artifacts that a developer needs from the server into the developer's vide," Pataky said.

Duncan Mills, senior director of product management explained to InternetNews.com that multiple JDeveloper users can be linked into a common server and that provides a gateway to whatever application lifecycle management system an enterprise may be using.

JDeveloper is a free IDE for Oracle customers, though it is based on proprietary code. Mills noted that there is standard community support for JDeveloper, as well as paid support offerings.

Mills said that JDeveloper is still focused on JDK 6, which is inline with the current deployment of Fusion middleware servers.

"When Fusion middleware as a whole revs up to the newer version of Java, at that point in time, we'll be providing the tooling for that," Mills said. "Needless to say, yes we're working on Java 7 stuff but it's not in this release."
Java 7 is currently in the process of being finalized by the Java Community Process.

JDeveloper is one of many Java IDE's that Oracle supports. It also sponsors and supports the NetBeans IDE it acquired from Sun. NetBeans, in contrast to JDeveloper, is open source and also focused on supporting the bleeding edge of Java 7 standards. JDeveloper, meanwhile, is really focused on enabled Oracle Fusion middlware

That said, Mills noted that many developers use multiple Java IDEs.

"Many developers are a bit schizophrenic," Mills said. "They use JDeveloper for SOA modeling because it has got great visual tools, then they maybe use NetBeans for doing a web service development."